Playing catch up…..again!

Okay.  I really dropped the ball on the latter half of June.  I’ll try to make this short and sweet, but…….no promises.  I’m giving you the head’s up now!  I’ve got the whole day off since I don’t have any English classes today but still have to sit here and look busy.

One thing that really surprises me about Japan is that they’ll close the IC (interstate) if it rains too much. Since it’s rainy season, the IC has been closed quite frequently the past couple of weeks. That forces all of the traffic to either a) wait until it reopens, or b) go the back roads. The back roads here are usually tiny mountain roads. Sounds safe, right? I’ve heard that they close the IC to avoid accidents, but it seems very counter-intuitive……close the main road and force traffic onto a smaller road to be “safer”….? Here’s how you avoid accidents when it rains: SLOW. DOWN. Could you imagine if interstates in the States were closed down before every thunder storm?? There would be massive traffic jams in no time! I couldn’t imagine!

The weekend of June 16/17th we had the last big Kuma-gun fling that EVERYONE attended.  It was a huge BBQ party at the park in Yunomae.  Even though it poured rain the whole time, we huddled under our pavilion and had a wonderful time!  We stayed up late, and once we were finished with the party, we went back to the cabins that everyone was staying at and played Apples to Apples until the wee hours of the morning.  Ian and I didn’t stay in the cabins since our house was just five minutes down the road.  Instead, we went home and prepped up for a pancake party the next morning for everyone.  It was a tight fit, but we managed to get sixteen people in our house!  Quite an amazing feat if I do say so myself!    Everyone enjoyed pancakes drizzled with fruit toppings, chocolate sauce, and cream.  YUM!

The next two days I spent in the city with attempt #2 and #3 of getting my license, both of which were failures.  I’ve already blogged about them and don’t wish to revisit that part of my life.

The next day was Wednesday, and I had my elementary day.  In my fifth grade class, we were doing a counting lesson, and they were learning the phrase, “How many ______?”  Each student had a sheet of paper, and they had to pick a number 1-20 and draw that number of objects on it so that the rest of the class could count it later.  I was browsing up and down the aisles looking at what the kids were drawing, and one kid had a picture of a woman with two HUGE circles on her chest.  LOL!  I’m guessing that his number was two…..   I couldn’t help but to laugh at it, and after that he erased it and did something a little more appropriate. 

That day at break time, I was playing tag with the kids outside.  I rounded a corner too sharply and scraped up against a leaf of a tree limb.  It was sharp like a holly leaf and cut the skin ever so slightly.  I’m not sure what kind of tree it was, but it immediately stung and swelled up a bit.  I had a whelp on my arm!  The swelling went down later in the afternoon, but I was just so surprised to have such a reaction to a tree!  Later in the game, I guess I reached up or something, but the kids noticed my belly, so they giggled and continued to pull at my shirt, trying to get me to lift it up again.  When I wouldn’t, they took it upon themselves to tug on my shirt against my resistance until they were able to lift it up enough to touch it.  I’m not a pet, kids!

One of my girls that afternoon was really cute.  She told me that she was American (she’s not), but she doesn’t speak English.  (She said this in Japanese, and I was able to understand her!  Hurray!)  I laughed and told her that I was Japanese, but I couldn’t speak Japanese.    Ha. Ha.  I told a different girl during cleaning time about my summer vacation.  This girl LOVES me.  I don’t want to sound haughty in the least bit, but she ALWAYS wants me to be around her and play with her at recess.  She’s awesome.  I told her “I’m going to America in July.”  You should have seen the look on her face.  It was the saddest, most dreadful look ever.  I quickly had to assure her that it was just for a vacation and that I’d be back in August.  It was as if the world was lifted off her shoulders.  She was okay with it then. 

I joined dance club again that afternoon.  It was fun, and if I don’t understand or remember the dance moves, I just break out my own, which causes the girls to giggle.  It was hot at heck in that practice room, but we all sweated it out!

The next day, Thursday, we played a couple of games in class at the JHS.  My JTE had told me to create a few review games for class, and I did.  Except, I feel like sometimes when I create a game, he tends to change the rules to where it no longer is the original game that I wanted to play.    In my dreadful 3-1 class we played Hangman.  I’m not sure when exactly I’m going to learn my lesson when it comes to that game, but I keep hoping that the kids will one day just grow up and be more mature.  (It’s basically just a few dumb guys who cause all of the problems, but a few bad apples spoil the barrel!)  The first couple of letters guessed were A-R-S-E.  Arse, a slang word for butt.  I’m pretty sure that it was just a coincidence as I would be very, very surprised if my kids actually knew what arse meant.  However, the next letter guessed was X.  A-R-S-E-X.  Sex.  Awesome.  And completely, it’s arse sex.    To make matters worse, my JTE likes to play Hangman were it’s the students against the ALT, me.  I have NEVER won at this game because we play Hangman one word at a time instead of a phrase, and the students have their textbooks readily available to look at for reference.    Plus, I have to make a total of ten marks to make the Hangman body before I win.  I’m pretty sure that the game is rigged.  If I did somehow manage to get by those ten marks, I’m sure my JTE would suggest adding more detail to the Hangman like toes, fingers, etc.  I CAN’T WIN AT THIS GAME!!!!

I had to walk home in the rain that afternoon.  It was pouring down rain that morning, so I had Ian drop me off, but he had class that afternoon, so I had my two legs to carry me home.    By the time I got home, I looked like a drowned rain.  To add insult to injury, NOTHING ever dries during rainy season.  It will take AT LEAST a day before I get something dry enough to wear.

That night at eikaiwa, I had my adult class.  We were talking about hobbies and what we liked to do.  I was telling them about my sister and how she is good at EVERYTHING that she does.  I showed them some pictures of birthday cakes she had made for my nephews, and they agreed.  She’s amazing!  One of my students gave me two tomato plants that night.    I haven’t planted them yet, and they’re still sitting in the pots ready for a planting, but I’m looking forward to having juicy tomatoes later this summer!

UUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!  One of the worst things about rainy season is that it drives the bugs inside.  There are bugs here that live in the tatami mats are can be especially worse in the rainy season.  They’re called dani, and are kind of like bed bugs.  They are no way near as severe or as hard to get rid of as bed bugs, though.  I noticed two small circular red bumps on my arm the other day but didn’t think too much about it.  When I came home that afternoon, Ian asked if I had any bug bites, and I showed him the two that I had.  His legs and arms were COVERED with them.  Poor guy!  We had heard of other people getting dani, so we knew how to take care of it.  All you have to do is inject the tatami with poison and essentially bug bomb the mats.  After we did that, we didn’t have any problems.    Hurray!

I made fun of Ian that week because it seemed like he was falling apart.  The poor kid had all kinds of problems. 

1) He hit his knee on a rock a few weeks back while swimming, and that’s been hurting him. 

2) He had the bug bites.  Some of them were clustered together on his back, and I started calling it his “scabies.” 

3) He has some kind of allergic reaction to our travel size shampoo that we used when we stayed at a friend’s house, so he had a big pus-infected scab over his right eye.

4) The bottoms of his feet always peel in the summer time, but this summer has been especially bad.  They were crusty and nasty.

5) The last thing I don’t quite remember, but I know that there were five things.  Oh well!

Okay.  I’ll stop it here.  This is getting a little long, so I’ll break this up into multiple blogs.  Silly me for thinking that I could catch up everything in just one blog entry!